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The World Wide Web (abbreviated as WWW or W3, commonly known as the Web), is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a web browser, one can view web pages that may contain text, images, videos, and other multimedia, and navigate between them via hyperlinks.

Using concepts from his earlier hypertext systems like ENQUIRE, British engineer, computer scientist and at that time employee of CERN, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, now Director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), wrote a proposal in March 1989 for what would eventually become the World Wide Web. At CERN, a European research organization near Geneva situated on Swiss and French soil, Berners-Lee and Belgian computer scientist Robert Cailliau proposed in 1990 to use hypertext "to link and access information of various kinds as a web of nodes in which the user can browse at will", and they publicly introduced the project in December of the same year.

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iPhone photography is a growing medium, akin to Lomography in its cult status and the way it champions light-hearted, lo-fi, everyday shooting and off-beat effects. Like any good burgeoning artistic movement there are already a bunch of brilliant onl...

The Mashable Awards, our annual contest highlighting the very best the web has to offer, has received more than 225,000+ nominations already. If you haven't nominated yet, now's the time to nominate your favorite person, company or gadget. Anyone* wh...

The next major version of Firefox, originally slated for late 2010, has been delayed until early 2011. The change was announced by Firefox director Mike Beltzner. "Completing this work (on Firefox 4) is taking longer than initial estimates indicated ...

Update: Twitter is reporting that it has re-enabled image uploads for avatars and backgrounds. Get creative! Many users currently cannot change their profile picture on Twitter. Usually, the option resides under Settings - Profile, but right now it s...

The Internet is growing fast, but Google is growing even faster. According to online security company Arbor Networks, Google now represents an average 6.4% of all Internet traffic. This is a new record for Google, as it gained more than 1% of all Int...

The Mashable Awards, our annual contest highlighting the very best the web has to offer, is gaining momentum with more than 150,000 votes already. If you're an entrepreneur looking to get recognition or working for a startup that needs to get nominat...

China's State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping has launched an official online map service called Map World. It allows users to explore and search for specific locations. The service is simple to navigate, even though it's in Chinese. A zoom slider on...

Brace yourselves for the return of "Blue Steel." That's right. Ben Stiller's Derek Zoolander character, of 2001's big-screen comedy Zoolander, will be making his comeback as a web cartoon. The New York Times reports that the actor will resume his rol...

If you haven't noticed, cats are big on the Internet. Even though the occasional panda, turtle or slow loris gets a slice of the viral action, cats are, and always have been, the prevalent species to be found online. So why is it that the collective ...

In Germany -- a country very sensitive to privacy-related issues - people have been asked whether they want to opt out of Google's Street View by having their house blurred in the imagery before the service is launched. According to Google, 8,458,084...

To celebrate the 20th anniversary of their legendary album Doolittle, the Pixies are giving away a four-track live EP, now available for download. The EP contains the tracks Dancing The Manta Ray, Gouge Away, Monkey Gone To Heaven and Crackity Jones,...

We want to see your social media Halloween costumes! Enter for a chance to win a $400 shopping spree! Send us a photo of yourself wearing your social media Halloween costume via Flickr, Tumblr or by posting a link to your picture in the comments belo...

The number of Internet users will surpass 2 billion before the end of 2010, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) said in a report. The current world population is estimated by the U.S. Census Bureau to be 6.876 billion, which would mean th...

Dell has put up a product page for Dell Inspiron 15R Alloy Edition, a new 15.6-inch laptop with laser-etched waves on the body and a matching palmrest. The wavy, aluminum finish should give this Inspiron an air of luxury, but it's hard to judge wheth...

Broadcasts of the Chilean miners' rescue broke television and online audience records between Tuesday afternoon (ET) on October 12 -- when news first broke that the rescue was set to begin the following day -- and midnight ET Wednesday, October 13, a...

Some Facebook applications have been leaking user information -- specifically, Facebook UIDs -- to third party companies. The apps in question have a huge combined userbase. The Wall Street Journal reports that all of the 10 most popular Facebook app...

Google Sky has been a part of Google Earth since 2007, letting users view images of the heavens from sources such as the Hubble Space Telescope. Now, Google has partnered with Slooh to launch another layer in Google Earth, which lets users explore im...

Web browser Opera will get support for extensions - software enhancements that extend the browser's functionality, similar to add-ons in Firefox - in its next major iteration, Opera 11. Announced at Opera's Up North Web event today, Opera extensions ...

ChaCha, a service that lets you ask a question via a call or a text message from your mobile and quickly receive an answer, has nabbed another $20 million in a round of funding, led by Rho Ventures and VantagePoint. ChaCha has been well funded since ...

The Mashable Awards, our annual contest highlighting the very best the web has to offer, is gaining momentum quickly. If you're a brand looking to get recognition or an agency that wants to make sure your clients' are nominated, we have some quick ti...

Facebook may be looking to update its commenting plugin with a slew of very important features, including threaded comments, voting and more. If the screenshot is genuine, it's extremely interesting; the new features have the power to transform Faceb...

Update (4:32 p.m. ET): The Banksy intro has been pulled from YouTube. We have replaced it with a clip from Hulu, which is viewable to U.S. users only. British graffiti artist and political activist Banksy was invited to direct the opening sequence of...

The design process is fascinating, but almost always takes more time than the casual viewer can afford to invest. But time-lapse techniques can condense hours of work into a more manageable few minutes for your viewing pleasure. From logos and websit...

In a new study about the news consumption and sharing habits of its international readership, CNN found that 43% of online news sharing occurs via social media networks and tools, such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and MySpace, followed by e-mail (30...

If you didn't pay attention in your high school typing class, you might be regretting it now. Hovering hesitantly over the keys with two fingers and poking away is a waste of time -- not to mention it doesn't look very professional. But don't worry; ...

iPhone and Android owners, rejoice: the HootSuite mobile applications for these two platforms will be completely free as of noon PST on October 13. Furthermore, the iPad and BlackBerry apps, which are currently in the works, will also be free. HootSu...

Yahoo is rolling out a new search experience today, making its web search more streamlined and visual, improving its mobile search and adding a list of hot search topics to its front page. Now, when you search for entertainment or news-related topics...

A lot of time has passed since we've seen a new webOS device on the market, but after Palm's financial troubles and its subsequent acquisition by HP in April 2010, few people expected a Palm Pre successor before the end of the year. Now, speaking at ...

According to data from StatCounter, Internet Explorer has dipped below the 50%-mark in its global share of the Internet browser market. StatCounter shows IE at 51.34% of the market in August 2010; by the end of September, IE was holding on to just 49...

Have you started your blog on WordPress.com, and then thought about moving on to a self-hosted WordPress installation? The move gives you more freedom, but it also hurts your blog's SEO rankings. Now, however, WordPress offers a solution: Offsite Red...

The Mashable Awards, our annual contest highlighting the very best the web has to offer, is gaining momentum quickly. After just one week, we've received 30,000 nominations for more than 10,000 unique companies, apps and individuals. If you haven't n...

Yahoo's Ask America, an interactive site dedicated to the November 2010 elections, lets Americans voice their opinion on the most pressing U.S. matters, such as economy, immigration, taxes, national security, energy, environment and other issues. An ...

Facebook and Skype are working on a deal that would integrate Facebook Connect with Skype accounts, AllThingsD has learned, citing sources familiar with the situation. ATD has managed to get a hold of a screenshot showing the new features in action. ...

Twitter's number of monthly unique visitors finally surpassed that of MySpace in August. Though it ranked third among social networking sites, Twitter ranked #50 in the list of top 50 properties overall. The numbers were crunched by the marketing res...

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